Volume II 1603-1660 - The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple

INTRODUCTION. cxix
the Earl of Kent. He was intimate with Laud, whom he frequently
visited at Lambeth, with Usher, with Edward Hyde, Earl of
Clarendon, with Bulstrode Whitelock, with Noy, and with Sir Edward
Coke. He represented Oxford University during the whole of the
long parliament, and was one of the very few men who kept a
cool head and a sober judgment during that eventful period. His
fortune, which was considerable, amounting to over £40,000, he
bequeathed to his four executors, Sir Matthew Hale, of Lincoln's
Inn, Sir John Vaughan, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of the Common
Pleas, then an utter barrister of the Inner Temple, Edward Heyward,
his old friend, and Roland Jewkes, also of the Inner Temple, who
was called to the bar in 1658. He left a will and codicil, dated
th June, 1653,1 by which he described himself as " of the Inner
Temple London dwelling in Whitefryars next adjoining." After
certain legacies, he desired that his books might not be sold, but
that his executors should rather divide them amongst themselves,
" or otherwise dispose of them or the choicest of them for some
public use than put them to any common sale : it may do well in
some convenient library public or of some college in one of the
universities." His executors, knowing well his regard for this inn,
offered them to the Inner Temple. Conferences were accordingly
held between the benchers and the executors as to the disposal of
these books, consisting of eight thousand volumes, and the mode of
providing a suitable library for them. But the benchers were without
means, they were burdened with heavy assessments for the public
service, and were not in a position to build the necessary rooms.
After some years of delay, the inn being unable to comply with the
reasonable conditions of the executors, the latter feeling themselves,
as they said, the administrators of his will and not of his
anger, sent the books in January, 1659, to the university of Oxford,
for whom, but for some misunderstanding, they had been always
intended.'
He was buried in the Temple church, on the Inner Temple
side, " near the steps where the Saints' bell hangeth." The follow-
p. 327
IL 314
13. 364
I " Johannis Seldeni Jurisconsulti Opera Omnia," by David Wilkins. London,
1726, vol. i., p.
Burnet's " Life of Sir Matt. Hale." Oxford, 1856, p. 79 ; Biography, by the
Rt. Hon. Sir Edward Fry ; " Dict. Nat. Biog.," vol. li., p. 2 20.